Home is where The Horse is

For crimes against euphony, radical feminism and sell-by dates.

These days, pride of place in our sitting room is given over to a large, blue ball. It’s made of thick, yielding rubber and is surprisingly warm to the touch. It’s also very responsive, and the slightest breath of air will cause it to roll around the room in the most jovial manner. I sometimes give it a gentle punt with my toe, just to see where it will end up. Most of the time, it seems to prefer a position near to my end of the sofa, about five feet from the front of the TV.

This one is our second. We didn’t keep the first one very long.

Neither of them, of course, was ever intended as a pet.

The ball is in fact one of those devices designed to flatten your abdominal muscles while requiring you to lie on the floor in the most undignified manner imaginable. There are several of them at the gym, and The Horse decided she wanted one for Christmas.

I should have known that Christmas morning would hardly be a languid affair. I was but a few pages into my book of quotations when the tacitly applied pressure became unbearable.

“OK, OK, I’ll blow it up.”

So there I was, festive cup of tea little more than a forlorn wish, sat on the bedroom rug wearing nothing but the slippers I’d unwrapped just 10 minutes previously. Inside the box, two plastic bags. One contained the ball, in crescent moon-shaped, deflated form. The other contained a little hand pump, its plunger ergonomically designed to do maximum damage to the palm of your hand. I inserted the nozzle into the hole in the crescent and gave an experimental push. The plunger performed its task with a sad, moribund sigh.

So I got down to work, the regularity of my action producing the sound of an asthmatic seal attempting conjugal relations.

Having pumped vigorously for about 10 minutes, I was rather dismayed to find that the ball was still no bigger than my bladder after three or four pints. This was clearly not going to be an easy job. Shaking my hand to alleviate to the pain, I set to once more.

The Horse came to join me on the rug, looking at the picture on the box and getting herself all excited.

Some four bouts of handshaking - and 25 minutes - later, and the ball resembled the friendly blue sphere depicted in the photograph. I was done in, ready to climb back into bed and forget about the Day altogether.

It was then, and only then, that we discovered that there was no stopper included in the box.

As I sat listening to the mocking, breathy whistle of escaping air, I don’t know which deflated faster, me or the ball.

I have been to the gym three times in the last four days. Consequently, I’m toned and fit - I have a body that women admire and other men envy.

However, I don’t kick sand into the faces of the puny fellows on the beach.

Because I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to do.

Putting the bottle of wine into a carrier bag and checking that we had the keys, The Horse and I set off to visit our friends. They don’t live so far away but, curiously, we were unfazed when the taxi stopped at an address in Vietnam.

And we found ourselves in their sitting room, though I don’t remember us knocking or being welcomed. Above all else, I felt thirsty and, though our friends are perfectly hospitable, felt that I couldn’t wait and went outside looking for a drink. In the small square beyond the open side of their sitting room wall, among the knots of people, I found a cold water machine. It was turned with its back to me and its motor cover had a bas relief of David’s face upon its grey metal surface.

Even though I wanted to, I didn't drink. I don't know why. Instead I wandered around the corner and there, outside a cheap restaurant, was a group of my colleagues sitting on white, plastic garden furniture. They were engrossed in a meeting and advised me that it would be worth my while to join them. I promised that I would, just as soon as I had had a drink of water.

I went looking for the water machine.

It had moved, and was now on the south side of the square. The bas relief was speaking to me, its mouth moving languidly. And, although I couldn’t hear what it had to say, I knew that it was commanding me to do something. So I set off across the square, not entirely sure of where I was going, just knowing, subliminally, that I had to.

I found myself in our friends’ bedroom, which was in an entirely different building situated on the other side of the square. Through the doorway, I could still see the sitting room, though I couldn’t see The Horse inside it. I understood, somehow, that I was now in Building 1. I settled down onto the bed and noted how the wall panels washed from black through grey to white and then back to black. In fact, the whole room was done out in monochrome shades.

I wasn’t sure if I liked it. It made me feel uneasy.

The red lips, midway between floor and ceiling, caught my attention, offering, as they did, such a shocking contrast to the rest of the room. Detached from any support and independent of a face, they floated ethereally in the foreground of my vision. Within seconds they were joined by another 11 pairs, pale and etiolated, ranged on either side.

“You have one hour,” said the red lips, “then you will give account.” The grey lips bore silent witness to this.

Desperately aware of how little time this gave me to mount my defence, I stumbled back to the sitting room, noting, on the way, that the water machine was no longer where I had last seen it. Blundering through the billowing gauze curtains, I began shouting for help, knowing that an hour was nowhere near enough time to put together a cogent argument. No-one came, so I shouted again, louder this time. I was shouting, shouting – please, someone, please. There’s so little time.

One of the curtains seemed to have caught around my ankle, it tugged at me and I felt myself falling.

“Calm down. Calm down, darling. It was a nightmare. It’s OK. It’s OK.”

Momentarily displaced, heart beating audibly, I came back to myself.

To our bedroom. To our bed. To a sliver of light coming from the crack in the curtains. To the picture hanging on the far wall. To the silvered surface of the dressing table mirror. To the solid, black outlines of a familiar topography.

And to The Horse, a warm and gentle presence in the darkness, lightly stroking my upper arm in that wonderful way she does when I’m overwrought and panicky.

My second cup of the day, the sleep melting away like snow on a warm spring morning. Idly flicking on the TV, to find an interview with Herbie Hancock on the BBC. Who actually proved to be rather a dull interviewee. Except, that is, for one pithily perfect dictum, which I reproduce verbatim:

“Music is born of the human spirit; it speaks to the human spirit.”